VETERINARY JURISPRUDENCE. 
390 
bring the horse into court [ loud laughter ], for the purpose of the 
animal being identified by the witness, as being the horse which 
had been sold to the plaintiff. [Renewed laughter\. 
Mr. Watson should object to the horse being brought into 
court. [ Increased laughter ]. 
Mr. Baron Parke. — I think the Jury should have the op- 
portunity of looking at the horse, and of forming an opinion for 
themselves. 
The Jury, in the course of the day, retired from the court to 
look at the horse, which had been brought from the stables, to 
the outside of the court. 
Upon the return of the Jury, several of them said that they 
were just as wise then upon the subject as they were before 
they had gone out to look at the horse. 
After some other witnesses had been examined, 
Professor Spooner , of the Royal Veterinary College, Cam- 
den-town, was examined. He said — I remember examining 
this horse at the College on the ’29th of April. I submitted 
him to the usual preliminary tests, and as he trotted down I 
observed that he was lame in the off fore foot. I then examined 
his feet, and found that the feet were contracted, and that in the 
foot mentioned he had a “thrush,”’ or discharge. There was a 
“disinclination” (disintegration 'l) in the structure, accompanied 
by narrow feet. Narrow feet there might be, but still a health- 
iness might nevertheless exist in the feet, and no lameness be 
the result. There was a contraction of the heel. Contraction 
might be the result of disease, and there might also, from other 
circumstances, be contraction in the feet which was not the result 
of disease ; that is, a contraction in existence independent of 
disease. But in the case of this horse, in my opinion, the 
lameness is the result of a predisposition to an internal disease ; 
or, in other words, this “thrush,” and consequent lameness, are 
the results of internal disease. The horse is therefore unsound. 
In my opinion the horse has internal disease of the foot, which 
has produced this external appearance and lameness. The 
thrush was in the off fore foot. The contraction of the feet 
might exist, and the consequent tendencies might appear, but 
still not always in such a way as that a casual observer should 
notice them, whilst a real judge of what a horse is subject to 
on an examination would make the discovery. The attack of 
thrush may be cured, where it does not arise from predisposing 
causes, in a comparatively short time. There are two classes 
of thrush ; one where it is the result of predisposition and of 
internal causes, of inflammation of the leg or foot, or of the 
internal structure of the foot ; and in that case, as in the one 
under consideration, the effects are incurable, for a permanent 
